In one of the bar scenes, an extra is sitting in a booth on the other side of John (Nicolas Cage). This extra has a portrait tattoo of Cage that was autographed by Cage at that same bar when they happened to meet a few months before.
At one point in pre-production Nicolas Cage was attached to direct, but due to scheduling conflicts, he gave the director's chair to Johnny Martin.
The fourth film which Nicolas Cage played a vigilante. In 8mm: Ocho milímetros (1999) Tom Welles (Cage), a private eye, seeks vigilante justice upon the evil porn flick director Dino Velvet, his sleazy talent scout Eddie Pole, and the masked man "Machine" who brutally murdered Mary Ann Matthews for real in a snuff film. In El vengador fantasma (2007) Johnny Blaze (Cage), a motorcyclist becomes the hell-raising vigilante Ghost Rider as he fights the Devil's evil son Blackheart, and in Vengador Anónimo (2011), English teacher Will Gerard (Cage) hires an organization of vigilantes to kill the criminal who assaulted his wife Laura.
Though the film is rated R in the United States and R18 in New Zealand for its violence, profanity, and brutal rape sequence, it was given only the 15 certificate in the United Kingdom.